The Red Queen (113 page)

‘She promised that we Landborn may stay or go as we choose, and have places of our own here and husbands, but only if we want them,’ said Neeve.

I said nothing, feeling stunned by the turn of events and bewildered that I had allowed Dragon to go. I wondered if she had not unconsciously exerted coercion over me when she embraced me.

‘You had better let me take your hair down so that the veil will sit properly,’ said the big Redlander. ‘Different Chafiri and High Chafiri and their wives come to inspect us every other minute as if we were exotic beasts gathered for their entertainment. They like to speculate about the gruesome use that is like to be made of us. Oh, it will give me pleasure to see them herded aboard the emissary’s ship, though he may not want them.’

There was a movement outside and the Ekoni stepped in and held aside the curtain that hung from the roof, which had hidden us from view from the Great Hall. I expected a Chafiri man and his wife to enter, given what had been said, but instead, the Ekoni commanded us to come out. The other women silently formed a line and I joined it at the end, heart thumping. I had no idea what was happening and dared not draw attention to myself by reaching out to the slave in front of me to ask her coercively.

To my horror, all of the people in the Great Hall had moved back, forming a space at the centre, into which we walked, a line of women red-veiled and anonymous. I noticed a very small slender woman wearing a black mask and clad in a full-length tubelike purple gown so narrow that her legs seemed to be swaddled. She moved forward in tiny shuffling steps and, at the same time, she raised her arms to reveal great sweeping sleeves that fell to the floor, painted in fabulous hues.

‘Stop,’ she said.

We stopped.

She turned and bowed to a man who stepped out from the crowd. It was the diminutive golden-skinned old man I had seen speaking to Gilaine in my dream. His silver-white hair was drawn back tightly into a glossy queue and shone as if oiled, the harsh style accentuating his narrow slanting eyes, the bones in his cheeks prominent over the gaunt hollows of his face. His long drooping moustache had been waxed to hang in stiff shining icicles either side of his expressionless mouth. I was no longer in any doubt that he was the emissary because he was not masked. Instead his face had been painted white and it was utterly motionless and expressionless as he surveyed us. The plainness of the painted face contrasted oddly with the glittering cloth of gold of his tunic, the gorgeously embroidered trews and the jewel-crusted slippers he wore beneath them. He lifted his hands and pressed them palm to palm, one atop the other, elbows held high and stiff, and I noticed with a little shock that his nails were long and curving and had been sharpened into points and dipped in silver so that they looked like little echoes of the great silver-tipped metal sword he wore at his waist.

He made a slight but precise gesture with the forefinger of his upper hand, and eight women moved into the open from among the goggling crowd of Gadfians. They wore plain white silk tunics cinched tight with purple sashes at the waist, and loose silken trews above bare feet. Thrust into their belts were smaller versions of the same curving sword the old man wore, and like him, their faces were painted white.

‘Which one,’ said the emissary, and there was none of the music I had heard in his voice in my dream. It was hard and implacable.

Another man stepped out to stand beside him, a slender, extraordinarily beautiful man clad in matt black trews and a tunic that set off his pale flawless skin, his hair falling down over his shoulders like a mantle of silken moonlight.

Terror flooded through me, for it was Ariel.

He moved towards me without hesitation and reached out to drag off my veil, then he grasped me by the arm, hauling me out of line, his fingers biting hard into my flesh. Despite my shock, I was ready and I tried at once to enter his mind, but only then did I realise he was wearing gloves. They were so thin and pale and he himself was so pale that I had not realised it, and they prevented me from being able to use my abilities. He laughed and lifting his hand casually, he slapped me across the face as hard as he could. My head snapped back and my ears rang. I tasted blood and was dimly aware of shock in the faces of most of the watchers. But the face of the emissary and of his countrywomen, those in white and the one in the purple tunic, showed no emotion.

‘This is she, Chodan Sangmu,’ Ariel said. ‘The woman who would keep me from fulfilling my destiny as the man who gave your emperor the power to conquer his enemies.’

Ariel turned to me then and leaned close, his lips curved into a knowing, sickeningly intimate smile. ‘Did you truly think you could oppose me?’ he whispered. ‘I told you that you would come to me.’

He was astonishingly handsome seen so close, and yet his eyes glittered with madness and his smile was a humourless rictus. My heart felt like stone, dragging at my chest, and drearily I wondered how long ago he had futuretold this moment, how many years he had gloated in advance over it. Had he foreseen Dragon’s coming, too? I had no doubt the monster that had chased her into a nightmare about Matthew was the Destroyer.

Would it have made any difference if Atthis had lived, I wondered? Would the old bird have warned me in time to prevent this? Or had I made some other vital mistake that I would never comprehend?

As if my despair was a feast laid out for him, Ariel licked his lips, his eyes alight with cruel relish.

He had known, I thought sickly. Known he would need gloves so that he could touch me without the risk that I would coerce him. I ought to have been pleased, for it must mean he feared my strength, but even as the idea came to me, and I lifted my bare hand to touch his face, he released me and stepped back out of reach with a soft laugh.

‘Where is Dragon?’ I croaked.

‘I will have her soon enough,’ he said. ‘I laid the perfect bait after all, one I knew she would not be able to resist. I set a trap for the man she loves and she goes to him now, even though she knows he does not love her. Pitiful is it not? Pitiful behaviour for a queen, but of course she never will be a queen, and when she is dead, the bloodline of the Red Queens will have ended once and for all.’

How I loathed him, but even as my rage and fear for my friends mounted so that I could have flown at him regardless of the cost, two of the emissary’s women stepped forward and took hold of me. I discovered then that the paint they wore truly did prevent me reaching their minds as effectively as demon bands, though they were touching me with their bare hands. As they shackled my hands behind my back I looked at their master, the emissary, who watched impassively.

‘You have allied yourself to a madman,’ I began.

Ariel’s fist flashed out and he would have struck me full in the mouth if I had not turned my face aside at the last second. Nevertheless, the force of the blow tore me from the grip of the women and hurled me to the ground. I could not lift my hands to protect myself and my chin hit the floor with a force that made my ears ring.

‘A woman does not speak unless bidden by a man to do so,’ Ariel said silkily, as the women lifted me to my feet with astonishing strength. He grinned gloatingly at me. ‘I would cut out your tongue here and now for your insolence, but that would deprive me of the pleasure of hearing you scream.’

I looked at the emissary who had not moved a muscle. ‘You are a fool if you think you can trust him. Ariel will betray you and your people even as he betrayed the Herders and the Councilmen of the Land. His blood runs with treachery. Ask Gil –’

The emissary gave the slightest nod and instantly, one of the women holding me pressed a device to my arm. It was as if lightning had struck me. I felt the burning savaging pain of it in every part in my body, and I smelled it as I fell into bone-quaking darkness.

I woke to find myself being transferred from a ship boat to the
Black Ship
by Salamander’s men. My whole body ached as if I had been savagely beaten and I had a headache that was so terrible I could not see straight. It seemed only a little more terrible to see Salamander waiting on his deck, slender and tall and swathed in black as ever, and if he gloated as he summoned the enormous mute man who was his body servant to take me to the hold, I could not see it. His eyes were utterly cold and remote. Before I had the wit to realise I could no longer feel the block, Salamander leaned forward and snapped a demon band about my throat. Then his giant carried me down into the hold in his great muscled arms and deposited me with surprising gentleness on the black-tarred floor of a dark cell. With a grunt he fastened my shackled hands to a chain attached to a thick ring embedded in the floor, and set a bucket of water and an empty bucket beside me. Then he went out and the door clanked shut.

I listened to his footsteps thudding on the hull until they faded out of hearing, and then I laid my face down on the reeking floor and wept. The pain of knowing that I had failed in my quest was greater than the pain of my body, the pain of knowing that Matthew was in Ariel’s hands and perhaps by now, Dragon as well. I tried to believe that she would realise what had happened and get away, reveal herself to her people and that they would rise against their oppressors, until it occurred to me that it did not matter. If my quest had failed, then the world was lost.

I lay awake a long time, fleeing waking nightmares and fearing life and what I would be made to do. Unable to escape my mind, I fled into it, into sleep, and then down through the layers of my mind until the mindstream shimmered and sang beneath me. I hung there, trying to think what to do, but whether it was the shock of the weapon that had been used on me or the terrible shock of seeing Ariel – knowing he had anticipated everything – I could not seem to formulate any course of action. I felt helpless in the face of his malevolent omniscience.

When I did muster the will to draw a thread from the stream, I could not get free of my mind to let it pool into a spirit shape that would enable me to escape the prison of my flesh, the prison in which my flesh now lay.

I looked down into the mindstream and for the first time in a very long while, I was tempted to listen to its siren song, which offered release, freedom from life and pain and terror, release from a quest that I could now only fail. If I died, Ariel could not get to Sentinel, for he did not yet know what I knew. After all, I could feel the wing-shaped token against my breasts, and the memory seed was still in the pocket of my trews. The rest was in my mind. The only thing I did not have was the stone sword, which remained with Ana and the others in the dome camp.

I felt sick again at the thought that he must know of the camp and of the others, even as he had known of Matthew. He might have slain them, but knowing his love of pain, I doubted it. He would torture them to learn all they knew, and that was almost everything that Cassy and Hannah had left me. Then he would come for the things I carried. Or maybe he knew about them already and cared not, for in having me, he had them.

Was
that
where I had gone wrong, I wondered bleakly? Without Atthis to guide me, had I told everything to my companions when I ought to have remained silent, keeping it all locked away, even from them? Was that what she would have told me, had I not used up her strength and the last of her life in saving Rushton? She had warned me that there would be a price to pay for saving him, and I had said recklessly that I would pay it.

It is not you who will pay,
she had sent and I had later taken it to mean that I would pay the price by having to manage my quest without her guidance. I had deeply regretted her death but I had not regretted the saving of Rushton’s life. But maybe when she had said I would not be the one to pay the price for her untimely death, she had meant that the world would pay the price. Had she hoped in those last second, that Astyanax would come and take her in quickly enough that she would still have time to tell me what I needed to hear? I would never know.

I did not know if there was comfort or bitterness in the knowledge that, in my deepest heart, I could not have done anything differently. I could never have let Rushton die. Thinking of him, I became aware of a golden light, and was astounded to discover it was emanating from me. But when I looked down, I realised it was not coming from me, but from a thick golden cord running away from my centre. I dipped my hand into it and felt Rushton, felt his lips on my neck and my mouth, heard his voice whispering my name. The memory of those few wondrous hours flooded through me and the cord glowed ever more brightly.

He lives, I thought, and realised that I could reach out to him and warn him about Ariel, bid him find Dragon and save her. I tried to flow along the thread to him as I had done before, but I could not escape my flesh. I ought to have been able to escape the constraints of the demon band in spirit-form, so it must be the block. I could feel it. I had been wrong in thinking it was not working when I had boarded the ship, wrong in thinking my mind was free for a moment before the demon band had been fastened on my neck.

In rage, I drew on the black spirit power and threw it against the block. To my surprise, it seemed to push hard against me for a moment. Puzzled, I ceased to attack and tried to examine it more closely. I pressed gently at it, and again, it pressed forward as if echoing my movement.

Then the golden cord seemed to pulse with life and for a second I
saw
Rushton. He looked around, as if he had heard someone call his name, and there was longing in his expression. I saw his lips shape my name and then he was gone. I cried out in frustration, but seeing him, I was reminded of my plea to him to live. And somehow he had done what he swore to do, and had lived and was here, somewhere.

And if
he
lived, then so must I.

I willed myself to wake and then lay very still, for I could hear someone moving stealthily across the chamber. I bit back a scream, realising that anyone creeping about on the
Black Ship
was more likely to be a friend than an enemy. Then I thought I heard the distant sound of an explosion and the person in the hold moved and I heard the faint but distinct sound of metallic beads clicking together.